Persepolis Rising полностью

If the Laconians knew where they’d gone, they wouldn’t stay hidden long. So that would be important. And it would be the last thing they did before they left, so the enemy wouldn’t have time to fix whatever they chose to break. She’d have to have everyone ready to go before the sensor arrays went down, so …

GATHER EVACUATION GROUPS

And in order to do that, they’d have to get the word to everyone in Saba’s networks. All the underground. All of them. And there it was. The sorrow and the fear. And the tightness at the back of her throat. It was all right. She just had to put it on her list. It was just part of the plan.

SAVE JIM

Saba sent a message an hour before “Ami Henders” was supposed to get off her shift. Bobbie got the same message, though none of the others did. It was a restaurant just one level under the drum’s inner surface and a route to reach it that would, if everything went well, avoid any checkpoints. Naomi washed her face in the little sink no wider than her two palms together and tugged her hair into something like order. When she got home to the Roci, she was going to spend a day in the showers. A whole damned day.

Alex and Clarissa were waiting for her in the public hall. Bobbie and Amos were a few meters down, pretending to talk, but actually keeping watch. They were both bruised, and there was a cut over Amos’ eye. They looked like they’d been caught in the explosion, which was technically true, but the tension that had been showing in the way Amos held his gut and shoulders was gone.

No, not gone. But lessened. That was good.

“We ready to paint the town red?” Clarissa asked, taking Naomi’s arm. It had the form of a playful gesture, but the need for support was there too.

“I hope this place serves margaritas,” Alex said. “It’s been a long time since I had a good margarita.”

“Trust me when I say you’ve never had a good margarita, Martian,” Amos replied. “Still some things only Earth does well.”

Bobbie caught Naomi’s eye, gave a little nod, and started off along the route. Amos walked at her side, his steps rolling a little in the fractional gravity, like something hurt with each step. Naomi gave them a few seconds, and then started after them. There was a story behind those bruises, and she had the impression she’d never know what it was.

James Holden had shipped with five others on his crew, but they weren’t five. They were a couple up ahead, and a different group of three behind. As ways to avoid pattern recognition, it was thin. But it was something.

The restaurant was a wide, white ceramic bar open to the corridor. Billows of steam came from the back, rich with the smells of fish and curry. The design didn’t fit into the aesthetic of the original ship. This space was a modification, the Nauvoo, which became the Behemoth, which became Medina Station in the process of learning what it was and would be. Looked at that way, Naomi liked the restaurant, even if it was a little ugly.

The man behind the counter nodded, greeted them all in a dialect Naomi didn’t recognize, and waved them back into the steam. The kitchen was small, with two women—one very old, the other hardly more than a girl—who looked at them curiously as they passed through.

The old man opened a thick metal door and nodded, smiling, at the walk-in freezer beyond it. Saba was already there, a blanket over his shoulders and a thin, black cigarette in his mouth. His cheeks were ruddy with the cold. The old man closed the door behind them, and a golden emergency light came on, throwing shadows across them from crates of vat-raised fish. Amos’ gaze cut over to Clarissa, but if anything she seemed to be enjoying the cold.

“Not perfect,” Saba said, “but hard for them to hear us.”

“You think they’re listening?”

“No,” Saba said. “But here, seems less likely I’m wrong. Perdón for the fast change. I didn’t have much warning.”

“Shikata ga nai,” Naomi said, and Saba nodded ruefully.

“We have a plan,” Bobbie said. “Well, Naomi does.”

“The outline of one anyway,” Naomi said. “I don’t love it, because a lot of things have to happen in a very small time frame. But the Typhoon arrives in less than a week, and slowing that down isn’t something I can do.”

“I have people,” Saba said. “You tell me, I’ll tell who needs telling.”

“There’s just a lot of moving parts,” Naomi said. “Lots of ways for things to break down.”

“Tell me a story,” Saba said through a cloud of smoke and visible breath.

Naomi did. She went through step by step, detail by detail. As she talked, the whole operation solidified in her mind, letting her speak with a clarity and authority she only halfway felt. It was a terrible plan, open to a thousand different failures, and some of them wouldn’t be things they could recover from. If the assault team couldn’t get onto the Storm. If the kill code was changed or unhackable. If the Laconian repair crews could get the sensors fixed more quickly than she expected.